1. Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to a technology for identifying, by an information processing device, a communication device to be a counterpart of the information processing device for performing communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a portable information processing device, such as smart phones and the like, has an imaging device such as camera mounted thereon. Such an information processing device is capable of identifying a person by a face recognition technology from an image imaged by the imaging device. Also, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2011-172089 discloses a technology for identifying a communication device owned by an identified person as a communication counterpart. In Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2011-172089, correspondence between a face image and the communication device owned by the person of the face image is previously stored in the information processing device. The information processing device identifies the communication device owned by the person of the face image based on the face image recognized from the image imaged by the imaging device and the content stored. The identified communication device is decided to be a communication counterpart of the information processing device.
The owner of the information processing device sometimes browses the image displayed on a display screen of the information processing device with other parson. At this time, the owner may transmit image data of the image being browsed from the owner's information processing device to a communication device owned by a person other than the owner.
For example, in a situation where a user A and a user B are browsing photograph together, the user A may provide the photograph being browsed from a smart phone owned by the user A (smart phone A) to a smart phone owned by the user B (smart phone B). In this case, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2011-172089, the user A is required to image the user B with the smart phone A under a predetermined imaging condition and identify the smart phone B as a communication counterpart. Such procedure is troublesome for the user A, since this requires temporarily stopping browsing the photograph and preparing imaging condition to image the user B. Further, if, after identifying the communication counterpart, communication is made possible with simple and intuitive operation, the operability of the smart phones is enhanced.